Canühome Shows Smart Sustainability

Canühome is an impressive 850 sf home with a smart design that includes a kitchen, bathroom, living room, dining room, and bedroom. Designed by Institute Without Boundaries, canühome is a healthy, sustainable, and affordable home. Perhaps, it is best suited for young couples, seniors, singles, and/or small families as either a “starter” or “finisher” house, but the possibilities are truly infinite.

The home pictured above and below is the display prototype used at the Green Living Show in Toronto. Bloggers Mariela Campo of Green Design Girl and Lloyd Alter of Treehugger both had pretty interesting things to say of the Toronto exhibit.

I like the idea that a canühome could go anywhere in most any environment, whether on the roof of a downtown building or in the backyard of a your parent’s suburban homestead. It could be an off-grid retreat, if built with some combination of solar, wind, geothermal, or any other alternative energy technology. If built, the real canühome is designed to capture, clean, and channel water and waste as part of a natural cycle.

I understand the demonstration home shown here was built with FSC-certified wood throughout. All the materials were non-toxic, but in addition, the design is healthy too. You may notice the universal design, which is particularly evident in the kitchen photos. Canühome also has a network of sensors throughout the house that monitor the usage habits of the homeowners and provide feedback relating to the their lifestyle and carbon imprint.

Like Lloyd and Mariela, I like what I see and think it would be interesting to see this design realized somewhere, maybe as a community of canühomes or even as one canühome in some exotic location. If you were going to buy a canühome, where would you put it?